


5 Days In May

by twriting



Series: World's Finest [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Superman - All Media Types, World's Finest (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Age Changes, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Female Clark Kent, Grumpy Batman v Enthusiastic College Student Cantrell Kent: Dawn of Trolling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-19 00:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22235701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twriting/pseuds/twriting
Summary: Funny how you can look in vainLiving on nerves and such sweet painThe loneliness that cuts so fine
Relationships: Clark Kent & Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Series: World's Finest [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1554871
Comments: 16
Kudos: 48





	1. Day One

Wednesday, 19th May

Robin swoops 'Nightwing' through the air, swinging the plush bat and bobbing it up and down to make its stubby wings flap. From the chair in front of the main monitor Batman watches her play. Relaxed, enjoying herself like a little kid. Good.

She plops the plush bat down on her lap and scoots her chair across the room to look at the monitor. "What are you working on?"

"Polynomials."

"What?" Robin frowns under her mask. Her entirely inadequate mask that covers her brow and nose but leaves the rest of her face exposed. At least the anti-flare lenses hide the colour of her eyes. He managed to talk down her colour choices to muted tones with a black outer lining on the cape. The outfit's utter lack of camoflauge properties... Does not scare him. She doesn't need camoflauge. She's still in training. Her job is to stay in the car and monitor the situation. The one thing they really agreed on is the helmet. Robin didn't like the way it threw off her balance. He worried the weight might screw up her back and neck development. Maybe they should have gone with some sort of light cowl to cover Robin's hair.

'Robin'. Not his identity. It's important to her. He'll get used to it.

"Polynomials." Columns of statistics and formulae glow on the monitor. Gotham crime numbers fed into a new statistical framework he's testing. "Variables are the basis of statistics. Statistics are key to tracking changes in a population over time. Like how crime rates change in Gotham's population."

"Is this a life lesson? I hate those." She's making a joke out of it, of course, but she's paying attention.

"Yes. Sorry."

He works, tracing patterns and mass habits through the numbers. Watches Robin watch him. Finally she sighs. "Yeah, all right. I'll do my homework."

"Thank you."

"Polynomials are still bullshit though."

"You can grow a lot of useful things in bullshit." One lesson down. Time enough later to talk to her about her language at school. It's one thing to swear around him and the former Royal Marine. Another to turn that language loose on a teacher. He'll let the polynomials lesson sink in first.

"These are statistics for police encounters broken down by region." He brings up a couple of charts and map displays. "We can chart it out over time as well."

"Oh hey, everyone in the Bergen Narrows was arrested like five times today."

"Slow day for the Narrows. But this is encounters, not arrests. Arrest rates are - "

A distant explosion, more a dull thud than a bang. The air in the cavern shakes. Over at the security post a light goes red. Batman... Does not flinch. Maybe he grits his teeth a bit. It is not a flinch. Another explosion, closer. Another intruder alert goes red. Air moves through the cave, coming through the channel that connects it to the underground river beneath Bristol.

"Batman?" Robin looks to him for some sort of explanation or reassurance.

"You could just fucking knock," he says, staring straight at the glowing maths.

"Bat - " Robin is cut off by a gust of wind that suddenly becomes a figure. The dark haired woman smiles at her.

"Hi! Oh, this must be your work outfit. I love it!"

"Oh Cantrell, hi! How do you do that? Br- Batman, why didn't you tell me she was coming?"

Because she never bothers to tell him she's coming.

Like he's in any position to point fingers.

She's wearing a green plaid microskirt that shows too much leg for comfort with strategically torn stockings and a strapless crop top. Various leather and metal bits, mostly studded, accessorize the outfit. Still smiling she hands Robin two plastic containers and a file folder.

"The cookies are for you. I hope you like old fashioned gingersnaps, but if you don't I know Alfred does, and there are s'mores cookies as well. The folder is for Catwoman. I had some business in Star City and so I took a few minutes and scanned the homes of the ultra-wealthy who are rumoured to be involved in illegal activities. Incidentally Batman, I love what you've done with the decor upstairs."

Trolling him again. "Should you be here? What if someone notices you're not on campus?"

"It's okay, I tell people I go for a jog in the evenings."

Her physique requires an explanation. He knows she uses - pretends to use - the campus gym, and he's seen the weights she leaves lying around her room. 175 pounds, just shy of 5'11". Looks like she belongs on the cover of a women's fitness magazine. Or maybe a men's magazine, given her other attributes.

"That's not your usual style," Robin eyes Kent's shoulders. Selina has her eye on those shoulders as well, describes Kent as one of those women who gets hit on by straight women. He hadn't known that was a thing. "Are you going out?"

"Yeah, I'm going to a place called Cherry Poptart. It's kind of a retro-punk thing for some reason. Not my choice, but all my friends are going. This outfit should probably blend in."

That crop top doesn't cover enough. Really shouldn't be speculating on her cup size. Why is he getting distracted? "Did it occur to you that all that noise might disturb the bats in the other parts of the cave?"

"No, they're fine. I can hear them squeaking at each other, being all social. Their activity levels are pretty normal for this time of day."

"You can hear them through the cave walls." Of course she can. "Is there anything you can't do?"

She gives him this look. Like she's... Not angry. Annoyed? Frustrated. "I'm having trouble making friends with this one guy lately."

Is that what she thinks she's doing? "You're like a goddamn puppy."

She breaks into that ridiculous smile of hers. The one that's like staring into the sun. "Thank you."

Dixie snickers. "Puppy dog one, grumpy bat zero."

Kent runs a hand through hair that's almost curly. Mom's hair had been wavy, not as dark and thick. Ever since he saw Kent in that black dress he's been having trouble _not_ seeing similarities between the two tall square-jawed dark-haired women.

"Bats, I dropped by for... Business, I guess? I've got something I need to talk to you about. Tomorrow maybe? Or I'm out of school until Monday so sometime in the next couple of days. I just wanted to check if you're busy. Like I said, tonight I'm going out with friends. I think Jimmy said Lois's sister will be there too. Bruce, you should come. I can fly you to Metropolis."

"I'm working. I don't have time to hang out with a bunch of college kids."

"Don't try to play senior citizen here, B. You're only twenty-four."

"It's the experiences, not the number."

"Okay, boomer." Robin laughs. He set himself up for that one. "Are you busy tomorrow?"

Not in the middle of any investigations. He needs time for that bruise on his shoulder to fully heal. Robin seems to be doing well. One presentation to attend tomorrow and a couple of papers to sign, should all be done before noon at the latest. "No. Why?"

"Well." She shifts her balance. Seems uncomfortable. "I'm going public next month. But there's something I figured I should tell you first. Actually it's easier if I show you."

The superwoman is about to go public. But first he gets a private briefing. "All right.


	2. Day Two (Part I)

Thursday, 20th May

She texts him the details in the morning. Whatever she has to show him is in northwestern Connecticut. It would have been good to know that yesterday. Give him more time to prepare. As it is he has to ask Alfred to have hiking gear ready for early afternoon. Alfred will take care of it after driving Dixie to school.

Dixie has obviously noticed something about Cantrell, but the idea that her foster parent's nice friend might be superhumanly powerful is outside her experience. Well, she's at school right now. Explanations can come later.

Business at Wayne Holdings takes less time than expected. The only thing that really requires any attention on his part is a report on minor financial improprieties at a Wayne Industries subsidiary in Chukyo. Typical in-dealing for Japanese corporations, not a good look for a multinational conglomerate. "It's going to take a light touch," Lucius Fox tells him. "It's not exactly legal, but it's only going to be a problem if someone makes noise about it. And we do need to stay on good terms with a couple of the people involved."

"I'll get started on this today," Bruce holds up the external hard drive Fox presented him with. "Is there anything on here that's likely to piss me off? Or that I shouldn't have on my secure console at home?"

"No, why? Planning on slacking off early?"

"Alfred is still trying to teach me to cook. If I get home early I can review this and have time to help prepare dinner for Dixie."

"That poor kid."

The hard drive is secure in his home office. Now he's preparing for whatever it is Kent has hidden in the middle of nowhere. He goes through the gear Alfred has laid out for him on his bed. Socks. Sweat-absorbent inner clothes. Wind and water resistant outer layers. Equipment harness with tool knife and multitools. Backpack with fire and cooking gear, hatchet, rations, water bottle, sleeping roll, and emergency aid kit. Water purification tablets. Cellphone. Radio. Spare batteries. Binoculars. Flashlight. Sunglasses. Watch. Orientation gear. Maps of Connecticut and surrounding states. Emergency flares...

Good enough. He dresses carefully, keeping one eye on the time. Checking each layer for how it might pull or chafe, adjusting belts and fasteners, distributing weight for maximum comfort in heavy clothes. Kent should be here in about ten minutes, if she keeps to her schedule. He pulls on the backpack and adjusts the harness, hops a couple of times and swivels at the hips, and adjusts the harness again. He's pulling on the wool cap when a knock comes at his balcony doors.

Of course she can't just use the buzzer at the front gate. Bruce opens the double-layered tempered glass doors. "Kent."

"Hi Bruce!" She steps in from the balcony and looks around his bedroom. "That is a lot of hardwood and dark leather. Are you sure you're not single? So, you ready to go?" Kent is completely unprepared. Worn jeans. Western-style roper boots. A battered cowboy hat that looks as though it has been stepped on by an actual cow. A worn leather jacket and a half-tucked flannel shirt checked in pink, lavender, and blue. She's ready for Pride parade, not the wilderness.

Her eyes flick up and down Bruce. "What are you staring at?"

"Oh, ah. Sorry. It's just that you're carrying a lot of gear for a short trip."

"This is the standard gear recommended for a wilderness hike."

Kent takes in the boots. The clothes. The cold-weather cap. Her gaze goes to the water bottle hanging off the harness. Back up to the sleeping roll. "Bruce, it's Lichtfield County, not a death march. Weekender country. There's a B&B less than two miles from where we're going."

The backpack probably is too much. He unstraps it and swings it down to the bed. "Let me grab a couple of pieces here."  
Kent watches, not trying to hide her amusement as he stores the radio, a small trauma kit, and the navigation equipment in his pockets.

"That's still a lot of stuff for someone travelling with a woman who can get you home in less than a minute."

Deliberately, he chooses two more small pieces of equipment to hang from his belt. "Would I survive the forces involved?"

"Well, maybe not so much. But that's not the point."

"Survival is very much the point. Where are we going?"

"It's an old gold mine dating back to the Eighteenth Century. Abandoned, closed off by a cave-in, and then bricked over in the Nineteenth Century. It's on the maps, but it's in a quiet area no one bothers with."

"Are you trying to sound like a serial killer?"

"What? No! I just have something important I need to show you."

"In an abandoned mine located in a secluded area with no signs of life."

"How do you make everything sound so creepy?"

"The only way it could be worse would be for you to offer to drive us out there in a white van."

"Bruce, c'mon." Her eyes go wide and she puts what is clearly intended to be an alluring tone in her voice. "I'll give you cookies if you come with me."

"I was wrong. You found another way."

"Bruce, just stop stalling and come with me."

"I'm not going to your cabin in the woods."

He's not sure if that look is annoyance or amusement. "Do you just not like the outdoors?"

"The manor grounds are about as rural as I'm used to."

"Will you be happier if I uproot the hills and bring them to Wayne Manor?"

He can actually imagine her doing that. An entire hill over her head, dripping gravel... "Don't do that."

"I'm joking, Bruce. That would cause so much ecological damage."

"You could flood the hole. Build a dock. Turn your cabin in the woods into a cottage by a lake."

That's definitely amusement. "Did the Bat of Gotham just make a joke? Anyways, stop calling it a cabin in the woods," Kent says. "You're making it sound weird. It's an abandoned mine in the hills."

"You don't think that sounds weird."

She reminds Bruce that she is eighteen by rolling her eyes and sighing. "It's a nice place. It's in a quiet area, and it gets sun most of the day and there's a little creek below it, and there are all sorts of berries. The bears love it."

"There are bears."

"Well yeah. Bears live in the wilderness. It's sort of their thing."

"I assumed we were going somewhere that was not actually their feeding site."

"Don't worry, we'll avoid them. They can't hurt me but I don't want them to get too used to being close to humans."

"On behalf of everyone who can't fight predatory megafauna with our bare hands, thank you." Picking up the pepper spray from the bed, he hangs the canister from his belt.

"You're welcome." She pulls her coat tighter around her shoulders. Smooths out a wrinkle in her shirt. "We should get going. I don't have a lot of time before summer classes start and I don't want to waste the week."

"Spring break?"

"Ish. My last exam was on Tuesday, summer semester doesn't start until Monday. This is about as much time as I get off through the year."

The hat is held in place with a string. He always thought that was just a thing for kids, but Kent's hat has a bit of string tied under her chin. She adjusts her hat and checks that the knot is tight. "So it's a bit over a hundred miles north-east as the Cantrell flies. We should be there in twelve minutes or so."

"That's five hundred miles an hour."

"About, yeah. I don't usually go that slow."

"The wind shear could kill me. What did you bring to carry me in?"

She shrugs. "Nothing. I can sort of protect you internally. There's a psychological component to my strength, so I can lift in a way that will protect you from external forces. It's a lot of work though, a lot harder than just lifting something by brute strength."

"You're going to carry me?"

"Yep."

"You are not going to carry me."

Grumbling like he has just said something unreasonable, Kent shrugs again. "Okay, in that case I need to brace your neck and back."

"That's still carrying. Did you not plan on bracing me before?"

"No, I was just gonna... " She holds her arms out and mimes carrying someone bridal-style. "Carry you."

"No."

"Oh my Lord, Lana never complained like this." He's almost certain Kent doesn't mean that as a challenge to him.

"All right." Not all right. None of this is all right. Not on any level.

She steps up against him and leans in, wrapping her arms around his torso, one hand one the back of his neck and the other in the small of his back. The brim of her hat nudges his chin. There are too few layers of fabric between them.

"This is not all right." Has she never carried anyone other than Lana Lang? Does she not know how to do this?

"Bruce, you just said - "

"I assumed you meant you would brace me from behind."

"Oh." She looks down, maybe to where she is pressed flat against him. It's hard to tell with all that hat in his face. "Well. Right. I guess that would work too."

Unwrapping herself from him, Kent steps back. She moves around behind him and places her hand on his neck again. He tries not to think about what that hand can do to hardened steel. She braces his neck with a hand at the base of his skull and her arm resting along his spine.

"This is better."

"Good." Then she steps forward and wraps her other arm around his hips.

"This is not all right." Industrial presses probably don't have as much power as her arms.

"I'm sorry, but you know what? I'm just going to carry you." Before he can protest she scoops him up in her arms. Effortlessly.

"This is uncomfortable."

"Oh, sorry. Should I adjust my grip?"

"I meant psychologically." How far can she throw someone like this? A mile? Ten miles? Orbit?

"Your masculinity is not on trial."

He's not sure what to do with his arms, so he crosses them. He shifts a bit, trying to keep his arm from nudging her somewhere awkward. Not entirely successful. "It's not that. I'm not used to being manhandled."

"Oh I don't know, it looked like Selina had a pretty good handle on you."

"We agreed that never happened."

Pausing as though she is not carrying over 250 pounds, Kent looks at him. "So how is Selina? I mean, with you having Dixie now?"

"She's adjusted." That's as much as he needs to say about it. "More than adjusted. They get along great, spend lots of time together. Dixie's a performer at heart. Selina - " is performative even when the spotlight is off. Everything is a show to her. "Is flamboyant herself."

"Well, that's Gotham for you. Everybody's got a gimmick. How's Dixie doing at school?"

This is ridiculous. She's holding him like an armful of fluffy sheets. Talking about his kid like there's nothing out of the ordinary here. "Good. Grades are fine. She's made some friends. I've got her on a half-schedule for training. Gives her more time for other things."

Face uncomfortably close to his she smiles at him. Casually carries him over to the balcony doors. "That's great. It sounds like you've really been able to help her."

Alfred is a retired soldier. Selina is a professional criminal. He's crazy. What's Kent's excuse for supporting what he has Dixie doing?

She pulls the balcony door closed with her foot. "Okay, you're going to experience a sense of freefall. You're not actually falling, I'm just lifting you clear of acceleration. Sort of."

They don't move but he feels as though he's falling, an endless drop that leaves his stomach floating inside him. Her pupils light up like stars. "I'm going to have to do some swooping around. It's always tricky finding a path where no one can see me. And avoiding satellite coverage is really difficult sometimes, let me tell you."

Takeoff is not gentle. His stomach lurches as his eyes and inner ears fight for control over his balance and then they are out of the manor grounds. Somehow his skin is not abraded from his face. And she wasn't joking about providing some defence against the forces of acceleration. The cluster of older mansions in the city's northwest is gone in seconds - Kane, Elliot, the park that replaced the old Cobblepot estate.

The rush of air is deafening. But when she speaks he can hear her as though they were back in his bedroom. "That's a really pretty house. The one with the pink gables."

They are above the homes of his merely wealthy neighbours and then past in almost the time it takes him to notice. Gotham's Bristol suburbs give way to the South Mountain Reservation and then she carries him into a swift arc along the eastern line of the Hudson Highlands.

"Okay, there's Bear Mountain. We turn east here."

His stomach doesn't turn itself inside out. But it tries.

They flash across the broad Hudson in less than five seconds and speed like a missile into the mountain valleys east of the river. Whatever path she's following is clearly one she is familiar with. She flits between peaks like a hummingbird in a garden. Narrating the whole way.

"Oh look, a moose!"

She carries him past entire mountains in seconds. They must be out of eastern New York in less than two minutes. The mountains smooth out to broad hills, deep wrinkles in the land separated by rivers. She drops lower, skimming the treetops.

"Bruce, did you bring a camera? I see warblers!"

Swooping between the hills of northern Connecticut like a slalom speedrun she follows a line of ponds and creeks. Now just yards above the ground she turns hard towards a hill that suddenly looms up huge in front of them and then she - Stops.

" _Phew!_ Damping acceleration like that is a lot trickier than it looks."

The mere laws of physics take hold of him. His organs settle into place as he finds _down_ again. Both his inner ears and the soles of his feet tingle as they long for the ground. Landing gently, Kent lets him down.

They're halfway up a hill, a narrow muddy gully below them. Surrounded by low bushes, they stand on a rough path leading to a blocked off tunnel in the side of the hill. By an act of will he does not wobble on his feet and does not reach out for stability to the nearest solid object. That would be her.

"We are never doing that again."

"How are you going to get back to Gotham?"

"I'll walk."

Her hair looks like a whole flock of birds nests. Somehow she still has her hat. It has been blown back, hanging at the back of her neck, but it's still on and intact.

"How did your hat survive all that?"

"It's got a string."

"That explains nothing."

She shrugs and makes a _meh_ noise. Probably used to not being able to explain a lot of things. "C'mon," she says, leading him towards the blocked tunnel. Past a series of warning signs.

It's a short walk to an old brick and mortar wall. The brick wall has obviously been attacked with hammers or similar equipment. A section of it is smashed open, debris on the tunnel floor, exposing a bit of open space. Beyond the gap lies broken stone. Kent waves at the hole. "I think that was probably done by cavers looking for an adventure. Some people just have no sense of self-preservation."

She presses her fingers against the old bricks. Into the old bricks, bricks that flow like powder. Ripples pass through the wall as it expands, pouring out to a cloud of grey particles. Like iron filings following magnetic force the cloud flows to the walls, compressing itself to an archway. Lines flow through the arch, forming etchings like writing. No writing he recognizes. Etched brushwork almost looks like a cross between Sanskrit and Japanese hiragana.

"I replaced the blockage with sunstone last July."

That explains nothing. "What is this?"

"It's easier to show you."

Training tells him to run. He follows Kent into the tunnel. The arch behind them flows again like dry sand, forming a smooth wall of polished crystal across the entrance. Blocking him in behind an unknown barrier. His caves are part of an old underground river, dried up centuries ago when the water carved itself a new channel. This is a mine hacked through the side of a hill, tool marks carved deep in the walls. The entrance runs about five or six yards down towards a glowing opening. He follows behind her. It's not like he has a choice.

He should have brought the K-Fall shard.

Past the entry tunnel the mine opens up into a cavern split by rock columns. Crystal grows over every surface, gleaming from within. Like a fungus over rotting food the crystal follows the lines of the old mine and then throws out branches through the tunnels. Archways of polished quartz, crossbeams and supports that light the space bright as day.

Their boots against the hard surface make hardly any sound. There are no echoes. Air moves without a whisper.

Here are old wooden beams embedded in the crystal growths. There, a long gouge in stone is filled with luminescent liquid gold, dripping golden symbols that tremble like quicksilver. She runs a finger along those symbols. " _Si demor bira daeheno kardaen bira zudror laem karna, bira yelso suve karna_."

The day-bright cavern has furniture, couches and stools of bright crystal all seeming to grow from the floor. Covered with soft cushions and blankets emblazoned with strange patterns. Along one wall there are framed pictures, a ranch, a family, a kitchen in a small house, home scenes arranged around a small shelf. On the shelf sits a human skull covered in red, gold, and blue glyphs.

"What is this?"

"Exactly what it looks like."

Nothing in this place is earthly.

"Wait here," she says, walking towards an archway set in a solid wall. "I need to change." The wall flows away to let her through and then seals behind her.

Glyphs form and reform through solid crystal, lines of indecipherable calligraphy etch themselves in hard surfaces and then vanish. The crystalline material forms archways and alcoves, lines radiating outwards almost like Art Deco. Tapestries in bright secondary colours stitched with incomprehensible symbols cover the hard surfaces, softening the stark lines.

The air is pure, perfectly clear. No scent but his own.

An open pod, brilliant in primary colours and gold, shaped like a deep sea insect. The pod's long internal couch has just enough room for one adult. Or for that child seat strapped in place.

Debris fallen from the sky, and a lost child found by a road. Science finds the debris to be flotsam from another world, the greatest development in astronomy since the telescope. Time shows that the child is stronger and faster than anyone - anything - in the world. The unearthly child remains hidden for years.

Changed, he'd assumed. Mutated by extraterrestrial matter.

Two figures grow from a base of crystals, a man and a woman, each raising a hand to support the globe above them. They wear tights and tunics in bright colours, and the man's tunic has a strange emblem on the front, like a simplified picture of a planet with rings around it. Their resemblance to the woman known as Cantrell Kent is obvious.

His only defence is over a hundred miles away, locked in another cave.

"It's a traditional memorial," Kent's voice comes from behind him. Bruce turns and finds her dressed in brilliant primary colours with a cape draped over her shoulders. "The ancestors and Great Krypton."

Whatever that emblem looks like, it's not an S.

Not mutated. Never human.

Alien.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Kryptonian Cantrell reads here is taken from background material developed by a linguist for the Man Of Steel movie.


	3. Day Two (Part II)

The cave is day-bright and echoless as a flat plain. Sharp edges hide behind strange textiles. An alien habitat. The animal that lives in the habitat. Has changed the course of a flooding river with her bare hands. Can track him anywhere on the planet.

The knife is useless. Nothing in here can be used as a weapon. Even the furniture is fused to the floor. The way out is fused shut.

The bear spray is useless. Strong enough to push his heart out through his spine. She's speaking. Just noise. "My birth name is Kala Jor-El. I was born on another planet, inhabited by people I'm pretty sure were descended from Earth human stock. It was destroyed by a natural disaster. My parents had just enough time to send me here."

The entrance is blocked by a seamless wall. There must be airshafts. Fissures in the mine walls.

"Bruce, you've gone pale. Nothing here will hurt you. Please try to breathe."

She wears intense colours, bright blue full-body tights with a vivid scarlet cape. On her chest, the same emblem she has dyed on to her hoody. Now a raised chrome brushstroke across a gold background. Gauntlets seemingly made of scarlet and gold hand wraps. Boots like someone started wrapping sandal straps and didn't stop until her calves and feet were fully bound. A red and gold belt.

Trying to strangle her with the cape would be a waste of effort. How much pressure to gouge out those eyes? Thirteen years of training. All useless.

"Would you like to sit?" She gestures at a couch grown from a single flawless crystal. "Or do you want to leave now? The door will open for you."

She can track him down anywhere on the planet. Breathe. _The door will open for you_. Why would she bother to lie?

He sets his weight on the edge of the couch. Puts his hands flat on its surface. Warm smooth crystal covered by a blanket made of geometric patches of colour. The symbols on the cushions almost look like inkbrush imitations of cuneiform.

Watching him from a few feet away, a worried smile. Worried, like there's anything he could do that might qualify as dangerous. Her hair is back in a ponytail, revealing a close undercut. Must be new. He'd have noticed that before. Not wearing her glasses. Eyes too intensely blue to be human. "Listen, the couch don't bite. You might be more comfortable if you sit back. Breathe a bit. I'll be right over here."

Breathe. Panic is a temporary biochemical state. Not sustainable. Ahead of him, the pod. With the child seat. The lifeboat. To the right, out of sight behind a rock and crystal pillar, the statues. Panic is not sustainable. With the statues, the wall covered with Kent family pictures. A memorial room. Two families. Breathe.

 _My birth name is Kala Jor-El_. Kent, Cantrell Joanne. Found by the side of a gravel road in June of 2006. _Destroyed by a natural disaster. Just enough time to send me here._

The symbols on the brightly coloured blanket... Are upside down. And mismatched. Numbers and letters. It's a quilt. Made from a baby blanket covered with ABCs and 123s, a couple of Keystone Kings jerseys. It's a fucking quilt. The symbols on the cushions are indecipherable. Handmade. Fucking needlepoint.

Breathe.

Strangely familiar smells and sounds draw his attention to the left. Kent is in what is clearly a kitchen. Counter space up against a curved stone and crystal wall, shelves, an island with a sink and drying rack, an actual white fridge. How the fuck did he miss an entire kitchen? Even if it does have vivariums built into the wall, full of green plants with fat insects flitting from branch to branch.

And a coffee machine. "Coffee?"

"What." 

"Coffee. How do you like your coffee?"

"What?"

"I can make sandwiches. Do you like bologna and pickle?" Scarlet cape billowing behind her, she walks over to him. Carrying something in her hand, large and flat with metal prods sticking down from it. She stops, her cape wrapping itself around her body in that blue suit, and unfolds the wide TV table. "Let's get you a bite to eat."

The teenaged mutant who turned into an alien has suddenly turned into a stereotypical midwestern farm wife. Carrying two platters covered with... food? Alien food?

"Want some puppy chow?"

"What the fuck is going on?"

"Well I guess that's a no. I've got chippers too. Or how about some buckeyes?"

He eyes the little platters. Most of the things on them are shades of brown. The - puppy chow? - is sort of greyish. The buckeyes... "Are those rabbit droppings?"

She inhales deeply, through her nose. "No. They are peanut butter in chocolate. If you're not hungry you could just say so." Cape flaring dramatically, she walks back to the kitchen and grabs another platter. She returns carrying coffee, cream, and sugar. Watching her hands, her arms, as she sets the platter on the little table, it's clear that outfit isn't any form of armour. Too thin.

Pulse only slightly elevated. Breathing steady. "What the fuck are you doing?"

She arranges the cushions in their needlepoint covers and sits next to him on the alien crystal couch. He watches how she flicks her cape out from under as she sits, drapping it around her upper body. "How's your hypervigilance right now?"

 _Ah_. Domesticating the animal with food. "Off the fucking charts." She's had lots of chances to kill him. If she'd ever been remotely interested in harming him. Post-traumatic hypervigilance is a fucking liar. Sometimes. "An entire world destroyed by a natural disaster."

"Don't worry about it here. That planet's geology was completely different from Earth. We're safe."

 _We_. "You come from a planet of superhumans."

"Nah. It's the environment here. The brighter sun supercharges my cells." So casual about it all. "If I'd stayed back on Krypton I'd be completely normal. And, y'know, dead."

Krypton. So casual about the insanity of what she's saying. Like they're not surrounded by a room of crystal that flows like sand. Like she doesn't casually recite words in an utterly foreign language. It could all be a lie except for that matter-of-factness. _Oh yeah, worlds die. Hadn't you heard?_

She raises her hand. For a second he thinks she might reach out. Instead she hesitates, gestures to him. Lowers her hand again. "Your breathing's a lot better now."

"Working on it." Breathing is fundamental to everything he does. Control your breathing, control your heart. Then you can lie effortlessly, throw yourself off a building with nothing but a polymer cape to catch you, fight an alley full of meth-jacked thieves. Even survive an environment completely outside your context. Like an alien habitat.

"If it makes you feel better, there's a big piece of kryptonite right over there."

"Krypton-ite."

With a gesture she clears the wall to their right. Behind a window of perfect crystal is a greenly glowing shard of translucent rock. "That's what I started calling that shit a few years ago."

The jagged shard is at least four times larger than his own piece. As he looks at it she draws her legs up onto the couch and pulls the cape around her. Covering herself. "Krypton. Ite."

"I was a kid, okay? It sounded good." Kent reaches out from under the cape to put her hand on his shoulder. "Do you need to go home?"

Not another flight like that. Not just yet. Her hand is still on his shoulder. Tense. But not damaging. Considering her full strength, Kent is shockingly gentle. She's still hiding under her cape. Like somehow that will protect her from whatever it is that stuff does.

Breathing is discipline. Discipline is insight. Fuck. "You should cover that display again. I'm not the only one being triggered here."

Another gesture and the wall returns to opaque crystal. "I thought it might make you feel better."

It doesn't. What does exposure to that stuff feel like, for Cantrell Kent to be moved to swearing? "Why krypton-ite?"

Rearranging her cape around her, she puts her feet back down on the floor. "My birth name is Kala Jor-El. I was born on the planet Krypton. Lived there until I was three. The planet exploded due to intense internal pressures. My parents had just enough warning to send me here." She waves towards the lifepod. "Ship there captured video of the explosion. If you really want to watch a planet blow up you can. I should tell you it gave me and my dad nightmares."

Planets explode. Is this true, or just something she believes? "Not your mother?"

"She was smart enough not to watch."

Kryptonite. The one substance that can hurt her. Doesn't matter what she wants to call it. "You named it after a planet? Or the gas?"

"Well. The word is coincidence. Like 'name' and 'namae' in English and Japanese." She scowls at the wall. Is she looking through it, or does she not even want to see that stuff? "Krypton's core was a lump of almost pure osmium mixed with other platinum group metals. The mantle also had an incredibly high percentage of heavy metals. When Krypton exploded it didn't just fuse the metals together, it smashed them down to a degenerate state. A little bit of that degenerate matter formed metastable - isotopes isn't exactly the right word, since the stuff isn't really a chemical element, but it's close enough. Some of that degenerate matter formed metastable isotopes, and some of that metastable stuff got dragged along with the other debris behind my lifeboat. That debris was the Kansas-Kawatche Fall, the K-Fall. The green stuff is from Krypton, it was made when Krypton exploded, so it's kryptonite."

"And it sounded good when you were a kid." So. The guy who built his identity around a bat that interrupted his childhood suicide attempt is in no place to cast stones.

"Yeah."

He studied criminology. not astronomy or physics. "Back up. What is degenerate matter?"

"Matter a whole lot denser than plutonium, where it's all jammed down so dense that even things like electrons get swapped out for heavier sub-atomic particles. Outside of white dwarf or neutron stars it should decay so fast that it barely has time to exist, but some forms last a little longer I guess. This shit seems to have a half life of about a hundred years."

A shard of it under his home. Under Dixie's home. "It's radioactive."

"Not conventionally." She holds up her hand and flexes, clenches her fist. How much pressure is that? "I have a sort of biokinetic reinforcing field, a force field, that strengthens my body. The particles it emits damage that field, which damages my cells. So it's not directly harmful to Earth humans. But the particles do cause secondary radiation when they're absorbed by ordinary matter, so anything exposed to it will slowly become radioactive. Where do you have it?"

"In a safe. In an old bomb shelter." Right under the medical wing of what Dixie calls the batcave.

"The metal in the safe'll be okay for about two years before it becomes a hazard. I'd recommend swapping it out for a new one every year just to be careful. Since it's only conventionally radioactive I can dispose of the old safe for you." She relaxes, leans back in her couch. He looks forward, watching calligraphy scrawl through the crystal wall. That suit seems almost glued to her curves. Fuck. Sometimes insight is unwelcome. All sorts of reactions he doesn't want to deal with.

"How?"

"Dump it in a volcano."

Of course. Why not? That's a perfectly sane and straightforward thing to say. Once you accept just how strong she is. An inhumanly strong person. Who claims to be an alien. _I was born on another planet, inhabited by people I'm pretty sure were descended from Earth human stock_. Human stock. She sounds like a rancher. Like a farm wife. The sort of person who would be concerned about him and Selina having kids due to the size difference.

"Human aliens."

Leaning back in the couch, she half shrugs. With her stretched back like that he can't help seeing the muscles in her arm and shoulders, or the curve - Pay attention, idiot. "Right in Gotham, Doctor Isley developed some sort of weird plant control abilities because she was tortured with plant toxins. How am I any stranger than that?"

"That - " he gestures with his finger. "Doctor Isley. Makes no fucking sense. At all. I'm not even a biologist and I know it's bullshit. And there's a guy stuck in the medical wing at Arkham because he can't survive outside of a sub-zero environment."

"I heard about that poor guy. But I don't understand why he's in a state mental institution."

"He's obsessed with a flash-frozen corpse. A woman who died of cancer decades ago, left her body to a cryogenics research centre. He thinks she's his wife."

"That's... certainly an interesting obsession."

He's quiet for a while, watching the wall. Not watching Kent. She watches him. On the wall, lines etch themselves through crystal "What are these symbols? In the walls."

"Those? The Kryptonian equivalent of a lava lamp. A bunch of algorithms take old poetry apart and then write new stuff. It's not very good but it's not supposed to be. It's like those 'live laugh love' signs that were everywhere when I was a kid."

Kryptonite. Ridiculous name. Bad poetry as home decor. Tights and a cape. A kitchen with built in vivariums. Chocolate-covered junk food that looks like rabbit droppings. All fucking ridiculous.

Less ridiculous, the memorial room. _Exactly what it looks like_. "What was that skull?"

"It's an ancestral codex. The story of the founding of the House. Kind of like a bible with a family tree in the front. That's the skull of Feln son of Rao, father of Rugad, father of Tomnu, father of Erok first of El. Well, a replica. The real one got blown up. And I doubt Feln was ever a real person."

She's made him uncomfortable for weeks. How does he not notice this shit? Fucking Kane genetics, that's how. He's probably been acting like an ass to her too. He did that to Selina. "I apologize for exposing you to kryptonite before."

He's supposed to be attracted to people after forming an emotional bond with them. Not after they terrorize him by dragging him through the air at near-mach speeds and then dump him in an alien habitat. He can't even get demisexuality right. Fuck.

Alfred and Selina definitely know. Dixie might even have noticed. Kent has superhuman senses. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

"You figured it out pretty quick. You backed away before it did any serious harm."

"And then you threw a grease dumpster at me."

"You can't say that. You need to say grease waste disposal bin or something."

"What?"

"Dumpster. It's a copyrighted term. Or trademarked. Anyway, it's a brand thing."

"I am not going to spend fifteen syllables on 'waste disposal bin'."

"I think that's only six or seven."

"It's still too many for a dumpster. How the fuck did we start talking about this?"

"Friends have weird conversations. We're bonding."

"I'm not glue. I don't bond." Too late. Useless fucking idiot.

"You were pretty sticky after I threw that grease waste disposal bin at you."

After the dumpster incident Alfred put him on a two-week course of antibiotics. It's not funny.

"You've got a weird laugh, but it suits you. It's cute."

'Like a deflating snake', Selina describes it. He got it from his mother's side of the family. Kate has the same laugh. A raspy wheeze.

"When you said you would brace me earlier." He puts his arms up as though cradling someone's neck and spine. "Were you really going to fucking push me through the air?"

"Well I don't know. No one else ever complained when I flew them around."

"Who have you carried before?"

"Lana. Pete."

"So. Your girlfriend, and an adolescent boy."

"Pete watched his hands."

"And Lang?"

"Couldn't keep her hands off me even when she still thought she was straight."

Kent smiles as he wheezes again. "You need to laugh more."

"Probably." They fall silent. Kent watches him openly. He watches her out of the corner of his vision. Those tights are, well, tight. She's only six years older than Dixie. Close enough in age to be sisters. He's only twelve years older than Dixie. Not old enough to be anyone's father. "I should get home."

He has no idea how to deal with attraction. Hasn't experienced it enough. Too walled off from others. Selina had solved the problem for him. He doubts Kent would appreciate it if he tried Selina's tactics with her.

"Do you want me to fly you back, or do you want to hike to that B&B and call for a ride?"

Fifteen minutes of rocketing through the air like a fucking missile. It's probably safer than his hovercycles. But the complete lack of control leaves him feeling powerless. _Lana never complained like this. Your masculinity is not on trial_. He stands up, and Kent follows.

"Fuck it. Let's just fly back. Get it over with."

Kent blurs. Her cape billows and flares around her, and she is holding a bundle of clothes. "Hang on, let me get out of these formal clothes." She blurs again, and is dressed in denim and flannel. Her hair, loose from the ponytail, is a nest again. Her alien clothes are neatly folded in her arms.

"Did you just strip and change in front of me?"

"You sound like my parents." She sounds defensive. "It's not like you could see anything."

The idea of her casually naked in front of him is now burnt into his brain. She's not even nineteen yet. "Your abilities skew your sense of personal boundaries."

Kent lets out an exasperated sigh. "Yes mom." She puts her clothes on the couch. "All right. Let's get you back to Selina. She said she'd be at your place this afternoon."

"When did you talk to her?"

"Couple of days ago. Well, I didn't want her to think we were sneaking around behind her back. I told her you and I needed to have a conversation so we could build some sort of working relationship."

"What did she say?"

Kent's light olive complexion turns a deep shade of olive. Her cheeks go red.

"Never mind. I can guess." God damn it Selina.

* * *

Maybe he's just overloaded. The flight back seems calmer than the one out, even when she swoops in low over a creek - "Beavers! Look Bruce, they're so cute!"

Insight takes time to absorb. Just because he's aware now of why she makes him uncomfortable doesn't ease the discomfort. Mountain valleys flash below them like potholes as he tries to absorb Krypton, lust, Kala, everything.

He's not a teenager anymore. He's painfully aware of her body, of her breasts pressed against his side. But at least he doesn't have an erection. Not more than half of one.

The highlands west of Gotham come into view. Despite their speed the wind on his skin is no worse than riding a fast bike. "Oh I love those gables. Who lives there, Bruce?" And they're above the manor grounds, his balcony doors coming up like a windshield on a bug - and they stop.

"So," Kent says as she sets him down on the balcony. "Same time tomorrow?"

"Yeah. I have a lot of questions."

"All right. I'll text you before I leave Metropolis." Casual. Like it's normal to fly between cities under your own power. Hypocrite. Turbine-powered flying motorcycles aren't exactly normal. Kent launches herself slowly, then breaks mach when she's clear of the balcony.

Familiar muted sounds of traffic, the breeze around the manor, a couple of birds. Smell of lawn and trees. The balcony is warm in the afternoon sun. Home. He opens the balcony doors and is greeted by the familiar scents of his own room. Himself. Selina. Wood polish and leather. There's even a familiar form laying across his sheets.

Selina, wearing cat ears and makeup. Stretched out on his bed, reading. She puts the book down as he closes the balcony doors. How does she make it look as though those ears are perking up?

A catburglar furry girlfriend who has her own girlfriend. Ashley is friendly and funny but he keeps his distance. She knows about Selina, but not him. This is his normal life on Earth. He's in no position to judge Kent.

She's wearing his sweater again. "Did Kent tell you we were coming back?"

"Cantrell texted me. So how was the camping trip?"

"An actual serial killer would call her cabin in the woods too creepy."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After decades of exposure I think audiences have forgotten how weird the Fortress of Solitude is. Superman's idea of a nice home away from home is a museum carved out of rock, ice, and alien crystals, and decorated with artifacts from a dead civilization. I think Bruce can be forgiven for being a bit freaked out when he first sees it.
> 
> Of course, there's nothing really normal about the batcave either.


	4. Day Three

Friday, 21st May  
  


"How'd dinner go?"

"Great. We made empanadas."

"You defrosted empanadas in the microwave."

"That counts."

Lucius Fox and Bruce discuss the Wayne Industries report from yesterday. Like too many things in his life the conversation feels fake, like both sides are reading a script that they haven't had time to rehearse. There are dozens of jobs and reputations at stake if the subsidiary takes a hit because he can't make himself pay full attention.

The woman in Metropolis claims to be an alien. Bruce has seen things that should be impossible to fake.

"Lucius, I apologize if I'm distracted. The other other business had my attention yesterday."

Leaning back in his chair, Lucius Fox studies his boss across the desk. "Bad news?"

"I don't think so." Regardless of how much fun she'd had, rescuing the hostages at that fundraiser had put her secrets at risk. She'd brought down a black market arms syndicate when she was in grade ten. Snuffed out the megafires in Australia. Cleaned up kilotons of debris though Puerto Rico.

"No. But distracting. But... " Bruce stretches. "Distractions aside, I agree with you about Chukyo. There's no point in not sending a message from the top. Give me at least three days to finish this matter up, don't take me out of Gotham for more than three days, and schedule this around my other commitments. Dixie and I could both use a trip."

"I'll coordinate with Alfred. There's nothing else really pressing on your schedule today. We will need you in tomorrow morning for the meeting, but today we're good. Go deal with business."

He hires a driver to get him home. Regardless of what is and isn't immediately important he still has responsibilities. He reads columns and charts, skims briefing notes, and checks his schedule to see when he'll have time to brush up on his Japanese. He'll also need to kick the rumour mills into gear by make a couple of high-profile appearances as Batman. That will cover for his absence from the city.

The driver lets him out at the gates. He triple checks to make sure he isn't leaving any confidential material in the car and overtips the driver. It's about a hundred and fifty yards from the gate to the main doors. The walk through familiar turf helps him clear his head.

Despite having a half dozen better things to do with his time, Alfred greets him at the front. "Miss Kent arrived about five minutes ago. She's waiting in the living room."

"Thanks, Alfred."

The living room is for guests, and Bruce's parents had it decorated in a classic Arts & Crafts style, full of warm polished wood and clean tiles. He hasn't bothered to update it, just pays people to make sure it doesn't get scuffed up. His guests seem to like it. Why change it? Kent stands by the tiled fireplace, head cocked as though she's listening to something inside the chimney. Or miles outside the building. When she sees Bruce her smile goes off like a camera flash. "Hi Bruce!"

"Kent. Not on the balcony today." Don't be a damned ass, Wayne.

Kent has a lot of leg and her denim cutoffs don't cover much of it. She's dressed like a student out for a walk on a Spring day, in a white MetU t-shirt and old army boots. "I was thinking about what you said about boundaries yesterday, and it's kind of true. I mean, it's hard to keep track of where my regular senses end and my enhanced senses begin, so my experiences of other people are a little, um, skewed. Anyway, I rang the front bell instead of just dropping in on the balcony."

"Thank you."

"Didn't stop at your front gate though. I figure it doesn't help either of us if I sign in as a visitor."

"That's true." He's still wearing his business suit. Does he even need to change? Somehow his Bruce Wayne Is Important costume seems inappropriate.

Kent steps towards him. "So I had an idea about carrying." She holds her arms up in front of her, mimes wrapping them around something. "I could pick you up under your arms like this, and sort of hold you underneath me as I fly. That way you're facing forward for the trip."

"You want to hold me under my armpits and drag me through the sky, facing the ground, at five hundred miles an hour."

"I thought you might be more comfortable. Would you rather be on top?"

"Phrasing."

"What?" Her innocent confusion seems genuine. Is she actually oblivious or just trolling him?

On the other hand. He does appreciate that Kent is trying to make this easy on him. "This is an inherently uncomfortable act. Let's just get this over with."

"Or!" Her face brightens. "I can't believe we didn't think of this before! Or I could just carry that hoverbike you use to visit Metropolis, and you could ride it!"

"If you're not directly supporting me, will I be able to keep my grip on the handlebars at five hundred miles an hour?"

The smile turns to surprise. "You don't have a seatbelt? Isn't that dangerous?"

He glares at her until she starts to fidget. "Okay, I admit. Given your lifestyle, that was not my best question."

"Let me change into something that doesn't involve a tie flapping in my face."

"Okay. I'll wait here. Not watching through the floor."

He stifles a twitch. "Why would you say that?"

"Boundaries? I'm letting you know that I won't - "

"Because if you hadn't said it, it wouldn't occur to me that you might. Watch through the floor."

"Oooh. Oh. Right. Okay, but I won't be watching you change so don't worry about it."

"Are you _trying_ to trigger my hypervigilance?"

He breaks away before she can answer and - Does not stomp into the hallway. He is a grown man and this is his home. He is not stomping away. He is just very large and these hard-soled shoes are loud.

Fuck.

The back of his neck itches the whole time he is changing. Finally he walks calmly and softly back to the living room in the central block, where Kent is waiting for him. Hovering three feet above the ground. Staring out the west wall with stars behind her eyes.

She turns those stars on Bruce. "There's a big family of cardinals in your woods. What the heck are you wearing?"

He's dressed about the same as she is. Running shoes, sweat pants, and a tank top. He hadn't even gotten cold yesterday. Whatever she had done to reduce the impact of the wind had also reduced the rate at which the wind carried away heat. "Workout gear."

"That shirt's a little, y'know, a little worn." Drifitng slowly floorwards she pulls the star-gaze up from his shoulders. "Do you want a sweater?"

"I'll be okay."

"Right." She stumbles a bit when she lands. "It's fine." Rubbing her palms on her cutoffs she walks towards him. "You ready?"

"Before we leave I have a question."

"Sure." She looks at him and waits.

"Your parents. Did you not know what that technology could do, or does it not work on humans?" Can it stitch a hole in a heart? A neck?

A slow wince twists her face before settling to resignation. She looks away, towards the bay windows. "Yeah." She shakes her head. "Other than genetics, Kryptonian society didn't have very good medicine. There was an animal on Krypton called a rondor. A sacred beast. Harming one was considered one of the worst forms of blasphemy. Their horns emitted an energy field that made their natural predators weak and sick. But on Kryptonian humans it had the opposite effect, healing disease and injury. Your mom has cancer? Your dad has a bad heart? Send them out to a rondor field to pray."

She breathes in slowly, then exhales. "Time to put mom and dad out to pasture. That was a kick in the teeth."

Her parents died eleven months ago, in the same month as her birthday, in what might very well be the worst year of her life. It's probably not coincidence that she has decided to go public around this anniversary. He has no idea what to say. Alfred tells him that's what rote phrases are for. "May their memory be a blessing."

"Thank you." Kent watches him for a second with a half smile. Is she waiting for something from him? "Mom would say I'm getting sentimental right now. Let's go before I get the urge to start reminiscing."

She scoops him up easily again. Once again folding his arms across his chest. Once again it does nothing to make the position any less uncomfortable. He did not think his clothing through and he regrets every decision that has led to this point. There are only three layers of fabric between his chest and Kent. One layer feels more heavily engineered than a suspension bridge.

"I'm going to fly over that pretty house with the pink gables again."

The flight this time is... Not worse. Different. He's able to take in more details, like the way air ripples as it piles up around you. Scents change when they pass out of the airspace around Gotham and its suburbs, the air is cleaner over the Hudson, and cleaner again in the mountains.

"Oh that's the same moose from yesterday! Hi moose!"

They buzz a valley at two-thirds the speed of sound - "Duckies!" - and Bruce is grateful for the distraction. Kent's breast is a source of uncomfortable warmth squished against his side. Right now adrenaline is all that stands between him and an impossible to hide hard-on. Generalized lust is easy to ignore. Specific attraction to another person surpasses his training in repression and denial.

"Hey Bruce, did you ever wonder what clouds feel like? On our way back I'll take you through that big one!" The fact that she is an irrepressible dumbass... Should help. Doesn't help. She's probably a morning person. Major turnoff.

They're in the valley with the muddy rivulet Kent called a creek. This time they land right up against the false brick and mortar. "There are some people right around the hill," Kent presses her hand into the wall again. "We should get inside quick." The supposedly solid wall turns to sand and flows out.

"Don't drag me through heavy fog." In a white t-shirt. She can't possibly be that unaware. Why does she do these things?

"What? Oh, the cloud. Yeah okay." Once again she leads him through the crystal arches. He stops halfway through. "It won't close with you in the way."

"Good." He steps inside and lets the arches flow back to a smooth crystal wall.

"The door will always let you out," Kent says. "I should have said that the first time I brought you through. And if anything happens to block the door, I or one of my robots will dig another passage for you."

"Of course you have robots."

"Bruce, you have a sub-cave full industrial robots. That's all those autoCAD CNC machines and 3d printers are." She leads him through a path of crystal again, both out of place and oddly at home in her t-shirt and cutoffs, boots almost silent on the glittering surface. The material isn't slick. He's able to walk behind her without his shoes slipping on the floor. By the confidence in her stride Kent is obviously used to walking on this surface.

Fluffing her hair out and working at the tangles, Kent turns to him. He pulls his gaze up quickly. "I've really got to remember to put this mess up before I fly."

"Dixie's hair isn't long, but she uses a lot of product before training."

The alien habitat again. Last time it had felt like stumbling out of reality. The deadened echoes, the pure air, the absolute cleanliness of the space. Brilliant fabrics hanging over translucent crystal. The kitchen with its vivariums. Not unexpected, not as hostile this time.

The walls no longer crawl with unreadable calligraphy. "Where's the poetry?"

"Oh, I turned that off. Honestly it just annoys me. The only reason I had it on yesterday was so this place would look more, y'know, Kryptonian." She looks around and gestures at the walls. "I thought it would be more believably alien than just blank crystal."

Watching etchings slide through solid crystal. Believably alien. "You turned on the lava lamp so the living room would look more trippy."

When Kent laughs it's a surprisingly warm sound, coming from deeper in the belly than his. Bruce realizes he's never heard this laugh from Cantrell - fuck, _Kent_ \- before. Some brief reactions of humour, chuckles, not full laughing.

"Here," Kent laughs again and gestures at the wall. "Maybe this will help."

Again symbols crawl through the wall before the couch. Fractal symbols. The lines of the largest etchings form the backbone from which smaller writings hang. In the curved spaces between the words there are glowing glyphs, lighting the area. "Kryptonian crosswords," she says.

He points at a grid partially filled with those cuneiform symbols he noticed yesterday. "This looks like sudoku."

"It is. I use it to practice writing Kryptonian numbers." Walking towards the kitchen she looks back over her shoulder. "I'm going to grab a bite. You want anything?"

He'd been rude about it yesterday. Shock overriding manners. And buckeyes really had looked suspiciously like rabbit droppings. Be polite now. "Yes please."

"Ooh, I've still got a little of Mrs Garcia's pie. I forgot about that." She places something on the island between the kitchen and living room and looks at him. Is she expecting him to say something? After a long pause she seems to make a decision. "Yeah, I guess it's alright. Bruce, you want some Oaxacana chocolate con leche pie? Mom learned the recipe from Mrs Garcia, Eddy's mom. Eddy was our lead ranch hand, he and Val - Valerie's his wife, related to Doctor Hutchens. Kawatche woman, you should see Val's paintings sometime, she mixes traditional motifs with modern oil paints. They're really good. Eddy and Val bought the ranch when mom and dad retired. Anyway, Eddy's mom made some amazing desserts. Mrs Garcia lived in Keystone City, her place had a real nice view of the Van Buren Bridge, and she and mom liked to get together whenever they could. Loved to talk cooking. The recipe's a bit of a Garcia family secret, so mom promised Mrs Garcia she'd only teach it to me."

She's gone stereotypical again. Are kitchens some sort of trigger for her? "Yes please."

Kent slices and plates a couple of pieces of pie. She doesn't bother with a TV table this time, just brings the plates over with forks. She hands the largest of the two slices to Bruce. "Here you go." She's watching him again. "Not just anyone gets to eat that pie, Bruce. I'd better be able to tell Mrs Garcia that you liked it."

The pie looks like a fluffy mousse and as his fork presses into it he catches the scents of chocolate, cinnamon, and chilis, and something else warm that he can't identify. The first bite tastes of silk and cinnamon and just a hint of some warm liquor mixed with memories of Alfred's hot chocolate, chased by the slow rising heat of the chilis.

"Bruce? You okay?"

He swallows carefully, licking the fork clean. "I once paid thirty four thousand dollars for a dessert prepared by an elite chef using ingredients shipped fresh from around the world and finished with edible gold. And it wasn't this good."

"Well, it's hard to beat home cooking." The alien clothes are still on the couch where she put them yesterday. Moving them aside, Kent sits and puts an arm up on the back of the couch.

"You made this?"

"It's Mrs Garcia's recipe, but yeah, I made this one. It's too bad you couldn't have tried one of mom's, she was a better cook than me."

Is she fucking joking? "Please tell Mrs Garcia that this is excellent. And if she needs a job I'm hiring."

The slice on Kent's plate is narrower than his little finger. Even eating slowly she's done before he is.

"That is almost exactly 'a bite to eat'."

"I don't need food for energy, just nutrients. And I get uncomfortable when my stomach's empty, so I eat a lot of greens. Takes longer to digest."

Bruce finishes the last bite of pie. Lets it melt slowly on his tongue before he swallows. Carefully licks the fork clean. "What do you use for energy?"

"I have an extra organelles in my cells that hold confinement rings made of bioorganometallic enzymes. Those process stellar photons to provide me with energy. Sol is younger and brighter than Krypton's sun, _Rao ma El_ , so the process is overcharged here."

Collecting solar energy for industrial or residential purposes requires panels. "You don't have the surface area to absorb enough light for what you do." And her skin isn't jet black.

"Nah. Stellar radiation is the catalyst, the rest of the process is a really complicated biochemical-psychokinetic reaction. How far did you get in maths and science?"

"Third year statistics and a lot of forensics."

"Okay, well, to put it in terms that someone with your background in biophysics can understand, I'm solar powered. Anything more detailed than that and it gets all anentropic forces and quark-gluon soupy really fast."

Kent collects the plates and gets up, walking back to the kitchen. He watches the puzzles on the wall. A creak comes from the kitchen and he realizes it's the door to a dishwasher. "There are some minor differences to my senses as well, the biggest one is my sense of smell. It's a little more finely tuned to analyzing human body odours than most people's. The rest of my sensory abilities are due to being overcharged. And there are some cellular development differences that give me a higher tissue density than other people. I actually weigh just a bit over two hundred pounds. I can't swim, I just thrash around while I fly through the water. Want something to drink? I have water, tea, or coffee. Out of milk though, I don't get out here enough to keep the place fully stocked." Kent pours herself a glass of water.

"No thank you. Did you never have any swimming lessons in school? Before you could fly."

She puts her glass in the dishwasher. "You think elementary schools in rural Kansas have swimming pools? They did have one at Smallville High but they shut it down the year before I moved there. Too expensive to maintain. Then when I was in grade ten they tore it down to extend the cafeteria. That's when they found all those bodies."

Yes. The mass grave from the murders back in the 1990s. "Smallville is the most fucked up small town in the United States."

She sits next to him on the couch again. Safely distant. "Did you know there's a prize for that? We won three years in a row."

"I'm assuming that's an internet thing."

"Well obviously. Everything's an internet thing."

They sit quietly for a bit. Is this a good silence? An awkward silence? He feels awkward. That must make it an awkward silence. Finally she breaks the quiet. "Anything you want to ask me about?"

Everything. Start with the basics. "Your name."

" _Kala Jor-El, faon ma Jor-El pa Lara-Lar-Van-laom-El_. Child of Great Star and Star-Wed Light of Waxing Moon. Jor-El, Great Star, was my father. Lara, Light, was my mother. The rest of her name was her patronymic. Kryptonian society had a lot of patriarchal traditions. And I don't want to hear any comment about my name from a guy called Willowlands Wheelmaker."

"Your birth-parents named you 'Child'."

She spreads her hands in a small shrug and smiles. "I can tell you a half-dozen terrestrial names that mean the same thing, Willow."

Starting with her ex's name. Interesting coincidence. "Cantrell Joanne?" 

"I'm named after dad's mom."

"Why not Joanne Cantrell?"

"Mom and dad liked the sound of it better."

That's all completely mundane. Kala Jor-El, daughter of her father. Cantrell Kent, named after her grandmother.

Enough mundanity. "How does an entire species of potential superhumans, with advanced technology and well-developed space travel, get wiped out in a single disaster?"

She leans forward. "Aside from the launch costs involved - Krypton's gravity was way higher than ours - Kryptonians just weren't interested in space travel. Actually they were really isolationist. Most of their space program was dedicated to launching defence satellites. Anything that got close, got shot." Kent leans back again. Her expression is hard to read. "If they'd been more open they would have had more chance to survive. But Earth humans would probably be extinct. I've thought about that a lot."

An entire species of superhumans, none of them raised by a hard-working generous couple from Kansas. All of them convinced of their own obvious physical and moral superiority.

"Astronomy wasn't a high priority on Krypton, but with their technology it was pretty easy to get good images of places like Earth. Kryptonian astronomers could resolve images down to about a foot on Earth, because they had a good angle to view us from, maybe a yard on a few other planets. We were a popular subject of speculation on Krypton, because of the similiarities between Kryptonians and Earthlings."

Standing up, Kent turns to face him. Hands on her hips. She looks... Not stressed, but a bit uncomfortable. Not used to discussing this subject. "There are civilizations at Vega and Polaris. Those scared the people of Krypton, I think. More advanced than Earth, more of a danger. Just going by what my archives say. And there might be one left around Alpha Centauri, but according to the Kryptonian archives that one was dying. And those archives are fifteen years out of date by now."

Alien civilizations. Dying worlds. "If you need to send your kid somewhere, send them to the place where they look like a local. But they're stronger and faster than anything else there."

"Yeah. Although they didn't really expect - " She gestures towards herself. "All this. Reading their observations of Earth I think my parents figured I'd be about ten times tougher than a normal person, maybe a bit more. Heat vision from controlled bioluminescence? Reactionless flight? Not something they expected."

An overpowered biological war machine packaged as an attractive teenager. And guided by a personality... Well. She's almost as enthusiastic as Dixie. And she has stayed relentlessly positive in the face of loss and stress. Takes personal risks to help others. Doesn't care about wealth. There are worse people to have this power.

Him, for a start.

"There's speculation about Earthlike planets, even some observations of oxygen atmospheres. But how do we not notice entire civilizations?"

"Cube root law and interstellar dust," Kent shrugs. Not distracting. Liar."The energy of electromagnetic broadcast communications disperses according to the cube root law, and it gets absorbed by dust, so any signal doesn't travel very far in space. Much past a lightyear it's drowned out by the interstellar background noise. And now that we've developed efficient direct communications, we make a lot less noise than we used to when everything was on radio or TV." She smooths a wrinkle from her shirt. Kent moves more than him. Not nerves. All that energy under her skin. "So I bet we'll spot one of these civilizations soon. Probably Vega, because it's spread through the entire star system. I don't know why they haven't visited us yet. But either we'll notice them or they'll drop by. Just a matter of time."

He leans back on the couch. Kent is still standing in front of him, hands on hips. Not shuffling, but there's too much energy in her posture to call her still. "How did you get a haircut?"

"Seriously? That's what you want to know about?" She turns around and lifts her long hair to show the extremely precise undercut. Then she lets it drop. Doesn't turn to face him again. He keeps his eyes on the back of her head. "Lana. She's probably the only person in the world who can cut my hair anymore. Like I said, there's a psychological component to my strength. And my strength, invulnerability, and controlled bioluminescence all come from the same source. Hair is dead, so it's not as high a priority to be protected. As long as I'm willing to accept, like really accept, someone cutting my hair, they can do it. Doesn't apply to the rest of me though. Survival instinct I guess. Hey, speaking of Lana let me show you some pictures."

Bruce Wayne has responsibilities. He blew through them this morning so he could return to this crystalline maze. Earth's only representative of an alien civilization wants to talk about her ex girlfriend. How the fuck did the conversation come to this?

The crystal ceiling has grown thin tendrils, and from those tendrils sprouts a screen. There are images on the screen, pictures of teens in a small town, and Kent flicks through them as though they were on her phone. She's sitting next to him again, a little too close. Or maybe that's just his reaction.

The background of this picture is crowded. A cafe somewhere. Kent, young and rounder in the face, and a redhead he recognizes from pictures as Lana Lang. In front of them is a drink with too much whipped cream and more chocolate sprinkles than any foam should be able to hold.

"Just around the corner from where I lived, but this was the first time I'd been there. Or been anywhere in Smallville actually. Lana took me there to introduce me to her friend Chloe. The place was really popular with the college students. Every once in a while some of us high school kids would get brave and hang out there for a while. Usually the music would drive us out. It was all that muddy-sounding stuff you have to be drunk or stoned to like."

Cantrell Kent was a tall kid, not as muscular as she is now but already broad and fit. Dressed in faded flannel. There's that adolescent awkwardness to her, like she hasn't figured out yet where all her limbs are. The shorter Lana Lang is leaning against Kent, hand somewhere out of sight under the table. Kent's face glows pink.

"How long had you two been going out?"

"Oh, we weren't yet. We'd only met the day before Chloe took this." Kent taps the image. "Lana still thought she was straight."

"She's licking whipped cream off your cheek."

"Eyup."

The image shifts. The next picture is of Kent pulling her t-shirt down to reveal her cleavage. He's relieved to note that no underaged cleavage is visible, due to Lang's head being in the way.

"This is a few weeks later. We were going out by then. Sort of. It got weird. Brad took this picture."

"Do I want to know why her face is in your chest?"

"I dropped a gummy bear. For mysterious reasons, somehow I was a real messy eater in high school."

"This borders on child pornography. Please don't show me this picture again."

She swipes it away. "So one time, Pete was producing a video tour of the school, and he walked in on me and Lana making out on a teacher's desk. I made him give me the thumb drive."

"That crosses the border. Delete it."

"Too late. I archived it in exotic-matter diamondoid-analogue memory crystals. It'll outlast the Great Pyramid."

Fine. It's her video. So long as she doesn't share it with anyone. "Is Dixie going to be this... hormonal?"

"Oh, probably."

He should sit down and have The Talk with her soon. "Fuck."

He'd been pretty hormonal himself. Back when he'd started indoor rock-climbing lessons he'd spent close to a month wondering if Julie Madison was interested in him, oblivious to her increasingly blatant attempts at seduction. In the end she resorted to taking off her top and throwing it at him. But for the most part the only outlet for his energy had been punching bags and makiwaras. Meanwhile Kent was spilling sweets down her top for her girlfriend to lick off. Someone got the short end of the stick here.

The screen shifts from pictures to social media posts. Videos. Some of them he recognizes. The redhead jumping off a building yelling _I can fly!_ went viral a few years ago before being dethroned by a gif of a child slowly toppling over on her tricycle.

Kent sighs and presses her nose between her fingers. She shakes her head. "By the time we realized that this stuff must have looked absolutely insane to anyone who didn't know about my abilities, Lana had a rep as the crazy girl. Stuck with her for years."

"According to your friend Sullivan's book, there was a rumour Lana tried to smother you in your sleep with a pillow."

"Darn it, Chloe. Lana wasn't trying to smother me, she just wanted to know how long I could hold my breath."

"In your sleep."

"It's a girl thing, Bruce. You wouldn't get it."

Is this something he needs to tell Dixie? If you want to know how long someone can hold their breath, just fucking ask them? Should he start locking the door to his suite?

He'd had some lazy image of small town life in mind. Pulled from who knows how many stereotypical shows about places better and cleaner than the big city. Innocence ruined in the last act. What he finds instead is Cantrell as a horny teenager with an active social life and lousy judgment. A nice kid, but no more innocent than any of her contemporaries in Gotham's high schools.

Less innocent. For at least a few years this small town in the middle of Delaware had been infamous as having the weirdest crime in the United States. In hindsight and with new knowledge, what the law enforcement and intelligence agencies knew about was nothing more than the fallout from a secret war fought between a sociopathic arms dealer and a superhuman teenager.

"Spring 2017."

"What about it?"

"I was twenty. Tracking down what I thought was a private club of expert martial artists, hoping to get training from them. Turned out to be a front for a cult called the League of Shadows."

"You were in a cult?"

"I got out." Barely. _Talia snarls, calls him traitor, as she tries to drive a knife into his kidney_. "What were you doing?"

"That Spring? Well, I was fourteen and getting ready to start grade ten. Doing a lot of needlepoint. That's how I memorized Kryptonian scripts. And I wanted to spend more time with mom so I finally got serious about learning to cook. Oh, and I'd just made some new friends, a group called the Legion. Spoilers though. I can't talk about them much."

Memorizing an alien language. Learning about her Kryptonian heritage. Meeting mysterious and vague Legions. "Your life makes mine seem ordinary."

"Bruce, you have ninja cult training and your family of Robin Hoods operates out of a secret lair under your mansion."

"I studied karate, jujutsu, and Royal Marines Commando hand-to-hand. Not ninjutsu."

Kent smiles at him and shakes her head. "Sorry. You're a totally ordinary commando-trained budoka billionaire."

Waving the screen away, Kent leans back in the couch. "I love Smallville. It was exactly where I needed to be growing up. I've visited a couple of times since going to MetU. Sometimes I want to go back and just pretend I'm ordinary. Never leave. But Lana's not there. Pete's not really there, he just visits his parents sometimes. Lex isn't there. Ava, Grace, Brad. Heck, even Caleb and Trevor aren't there anymore, and they both planned to stay." She looks over to him and smirks. "Fordman still is though."

He's read Sullivan's book, police and media reports, even seen that low-budget trainwreck of a series, and knows every name except the last. "Fordman who?"

Her answer is a hard grin. "Exactly."

Bruce leans back and watches Kent. "It must be nice to fit in. I wouldn't know." Traumatized, homeschooled, billionaire, lunatic. Never ordinary. "Why don't you go back? Why do you do what you do?"

"Because I'm the only one who can do it."

He tries, probably not very well, to hide the grimace. "That's not an explanation. I don't get your motives."

"What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour."

One of many different ways to state the so-called Golden Rule. "That doesn't mean you have to dig people out of rubble."

"It would have been hateful to me to have been abandoned after my people died."

Survivor. Refugee. Foundling. It can't possibly be that simple.

"What do you want from me?"

"To be friends. I know we got off to a really weird start, but I've got off to a weird start with friends before. A couple of them even tried to kill me when we first met. So I'd like us to be friends."

That explains nothing. "You don’t want to be famous. You're already in a relationship with a rich man. You've never asked him or me to buy you anything expensive. With your mind and abilities you could be rich yourself. With this technology you don't even need money. What do you want. From me?"

She just looks frustrated. He feels frustrated. And vaguely guilty. Like he's arguing with a puppy. "I want a lot out of you. Being friends is a lot of work."

He knows a handful of people who aren't impressed by Bruce Wayne's wealth, who don't want something from it. Dixie likes being rich, she loves the toys, but it doesn't impress her. Not like Alfred's driving skills do.

In the aftermath of an earthquake Cantrell Kent caught a train as it slid off the side of a mountain pass. Caught a train. In her bare hands. Kala Jor-El controls technology worth easily over a trillion dollars. She wants to be his friend. At no possible benefit to herself.

"You plan on being a social worker."

She tilts her head a bit, seems confused by the change in subjects. "Yes."

"How do you ignore what I'm training Dixie to do?"

"Ignore?" There's that grin of hers again. "Bruce, I approve. I know from personal experience that all sorts of stuff can happen to kids whether they're ready for it or not. Like the time I got shot in the face with a rocket launcher, or Lana rescued those bug aliens. So it's better to have you training Dixie than leaving her unprepared for life."

"Say that again."

"It's better to have you training - "

"No the bug alien part." And frankly, the rocket launcher part had been a bit of a surprise.

She blinks. Seems to genuinely think about what she has just casually dropped into the conversation. "Oh, right. That. Long story."

"I have time."

"Okay, well, Lana was out for a hike one day and she found an alien trapped under a fallen tree - "

"Fucking what?"

Kent shrugs as if the whole thing is no big deal. "Trees fall on people all the time. This one was lucky the tree didn't hurt them, from what Lana told me they sounded pretty frail compared to Earth people. So my point is, there's Lana out picking flowers, and she finds someone trapped under a tree. And she had no rescue training or powers or anything, but she still had to deal with the situation. And that happens all the time. People stumble into all sorts of messes they're not ready for. As far as I'm concerned, you training Dixie is a good thing. She's probably the only thirteen year old girl in Gotham who knows how to choke someone unconscious if they start creeping on her at the mall."

"I'm going to need you to unpack the bug alien trapped under a tree situation."

She frowns again. "How are you still stuck on that?"

He throws his hands up. "Mass murders, teenaged aliens, and bug people. How the fucking hell did no one notice what was going on in Smallville?"

Kent throws her own hands up in a wide shrug. "You're a pretty good investigator. Were you looking for anything like this?"

He laughs once, briefly. ' _Why didn't you tell me?_ ' ' _You didn't ask_.'

"We should probably get you home soon. What time does Dixie get out of school?"

"This Friday is a half-day. She usually hangs out with her friends for an hour or two before coming home."

"Is that safe? I mean, billionaire's foster kid and everything."

Fucking right that drives him crazy. But he'd rather she go to one of Bristol's public schools than any private school on Earth. The foster child of Bruce Wayne will be accepted by any university she chooses. Real lessons come from people. "She has a security perimeter for school. She also has my instructions to go full bat on anyone who tries anything. And our area of Bristol is crawling with cops and private security. But you're right, I should go soon."

"Well, I'm glad she's got friends. Any more questions before we head out?"

He has too many questions. Thousands of questions. The only one he can really think of is the obvious. "What happened to Lex Luthor?"

"Uh-uh. Spoilers."

"That's not an answer."

She stands. "It's all the answer I can give you. And honestly, it's all the answer you want now."

Bruce rises to stand next to her. She's only four or so inches shorter than him. Normally he towers over women and feels bulky. Like he's looming over them. "Do you have any questions for me?"

"How do you wear a tie? You basically don't have a neck."

"Any real questions?"

"Fiiine. I know Dixie said she liked it. Did you have any of the gooey butter pie?"

He could have been happy his entire life without knowing about gooey butter pie. No wonder everyone in the midwest has diabetes. "Too sweet for my tastes. But thank you." The smell alone made his teeth hurt. Selina had poked a slice with a fork and hissed at it. "Alfred and Dixie enjoyed it."

* * *

The flight back is almost tolerable. Even the part where they skim Moodna Creek.

Almost.

* * *

Dixie is most of the way up a salmon ladder. She pauses in her climb. "So, is Cantrell staying for dinner? Selina might be coming over. Ashley's mom has a flu so Ashley might go over to look after her. Not sure yet."

"Cantrell's not staying for dinner." He watches Dixie as she works her way up with the climbing rung. How much time adolescent energy and youthful poor judgment combine to have her playing questionable games with friends? He's the wrong person to talk with her about that. Too antisocial to have any experiences there. Late-middle-aged ex-military man Alfred Pennyworth is probably not the right person either. Does he even have the right to ask Selina? She's not Dixie's mother or foster parent, regardless of how well they get along.

Swinging from a rooftop is less stressful than this.

* * *

**Purrfectlysanecatlady** : So does her resemblance to humans go all the way?

 **201-46** : Behave yourself.

 **Purrfectlysanecatlady** : Have you actually met me?


	5. Day Four

Saturday, 22nd May

They both wear almost identical clothes, old jeans and white t-shirts, and he even pulled an old pair of army boots out of the back of a closet.

"We look like a cult," she says.

Above the Hudson he realizes she genuinely loves flying. Five seconds of skimming less than a foot above the waves and then they surge up and rocket into a narrow valley with her grinning like a kid the whole way. She yells "Surprise!" and as the oval lake flashes below it dawns on him she's making a bad joke.

"There's a bear in the valley," she says. "I don't see any hikers nearby, so that's okay. But there's a drone a bit too close so I'm going to open the door remotely and just fly right into the Fortress."

At least she warned him what to expect this time. But that cave wall comes up fast and they're in, Kent dropping to the glittering floor as the wall reforms behind them. She puts Bruce down and he stands, bracing himself, before he realizes he's bracing himself with his hand on her shoulder. Lower shoulder. Upper chest. He takes his hand away quickly. Hopefully not quickly enough to be insulting.

Stop overthinking every damned thing.

"Why do you call it the Fortress?"

" _Hi-sao-daen ma si-ro_. You know those seed repositories? The ones that are supposed to defend against loss of genetic diversity? That's what a _hisaodaen ma siro_ is, a repository, but for data and cultural artifacts and teachings. They're also places of meditation and contemplation, of learning. The closest translation I could come up with is Fortress of Solitude."

"Not a house?"

"Nah, this is formal architecture, like a church. Kryptonian homes were more comfortable than this."

Her refuge is a monastery.

"There are fresh crickets in the freezer. Just harvested yesterday. You want some? I can do fried or roasted."

Just think of the little weedeaters as land lobsters. "Sure. Fried sounds fine."

The kitchen seems to have its usual effect on her. She chatters about chapulines and traditional Kand-ra cuisine ("Lots of invertebrates. The steamed sea bugs actually look really good."), asks him what seasonings he wants ("Lime and salt, please"), and generally seems to be enjoying herself. Frying crickets smell like butter and garlic. Bruce watches while she cooks.

"I'm making coffee. You want?"

"Yes please."

Her last year of high school was not good for her. Breaking up on good terms is still breaking up. Ex-girlfriend moves to Japan in early Spring. A once in a lifetime opportunity arranged through her family's academic contacts. Then Cantrell's mother gets a terminal diagnosis, her friend pulls a vanishing act to become an internationally wanted felon, mother dies of cancer, father dies of stress cardiomyopathy, and she lives with her ex's mother while selling her family home. Finally Cantrell Kent moves to Metropolis to start a new life.

And is prompty hit with an exploitive miniseries about her friend where she's played by Brazilian model Beatriz Da Costa. A month later her friend Chloe Sullivan publishes her biography of Luthor, You're All Just Jealous Of My Death Ray, praised by critics as the funniest true crime book about nuclear terrorism ever writen.

She hands him a bowl of fried crickets and arranges some cushions to sit next to him on the couch.

"Cantrell. Are you lonely?"

She looks at him, confused. Probably wondering how the conversation turned to this. What to say. Then she stares at her crickets and shakes the bowl. "... Yeah."

Fuck.

All that, and then someone shows up who knows about her. Who seems to be making some sort of effort to connect with her. And he turns out to be a moody asshole.

"I've got friends at school. I mean, I've known Brad for years. Sally and Lori. Jimmy obviously. But it's not like home was. And, you know, my parents."

She lives in the oldest building at MetU, the last traditional dormitory-style student residence on the campus. Coincidentally also the residence for the sort of scholarship and grant students who offer the university the lowest revenue stream. Played by a woman with no acting experience or training who was cast for her ability to fill out a t-shirt, accepted to a scholarship that would be a death march for anyone else, dumped into substandard housing, required to pay for a meal plan she doesn't need and then told to keep her grades up or lose an even bigger portion of her already tiny refund. It's not a matter of what she can physically endure.

Kent - Cantrell - waves her and tendrils of crystal grow from the floor. Like a timelapse of vines. They flow and merge to a form table. He tries to remember when he accepted that every surface in this place would respond to her whims. She puts the fried crickets on the table and sits back, staring at the far wall.

"You were right about what you said earlier, money and power are useless to me. Look at all this, look at everything I have have. Look at everything I can do." She holds her arms out wide, a helpless gesture. For a second he thinks he sees water in her eyes. She blinks hard and it's gone. "I want my parents back."

Adopted 2006. Parents die 2020. Longer than he got but still not enough. What is enough?

"Last year was a bad year for you."

"The worst, yeah. At least I don't remember Krypton blowing up."

"Mind if I go through this one step at a time? First you split up with someone you've been going out with for three or four years, she moves, your mother gets her diagnosis - "

"Yeah. I know."

"Luthor goes off the rails, your mother dies - "

"I _know_."

"Your father dies - "

" _ **I KNOW!**_ "

Loud as a gunshot. If there were echoes in this confined space he'd be deaf for at least a minute. As it is his ears are stunned for a few seconds.

The shock on her face turns to shame. " _mmmsrry. Rrr_ you okay?"

"I'm good. Little stunned."

"Sorry. I shouldn't have raised my voice."

"Is that as loud as you can yell?"

She closes her eyes, still ashamed. "That was just talking too loud. If I'd been yelling, you'd be dead. I'm louder than a grenade. I'm sorry. Are your ears okay?"

Not quite ringing, but they hurt. "You can't even scream to let off some of the tension. How have you been getting through these anniversaries?"

She raises a hand and clenches. Opens and clenches again. "I work. School. Rescue work. I've been thinking of trying to write some articles about Suicide Slum. I did some articles for the Sentinel in Smallville, the editor knows George Taylor at the Daily Star."

Work. Keep moving forward. Like the proverbial shark, keep moving or you'll drown. Except that's not true. Even sharks sleep. Everything needs to rest. "Do you have any support from anyone who knows who you really are?"

"Lana calls a lot, or texts. Pete too. They're both great. I've visited them a couple of times. Brad doesn't know about me but he tries to help. I get messages from other people asking how I'm doing. I tell them I'm doing good. School is good, my field training is going good. I've got a boyfriend."

"How are you doing?"

"I'm surviving."

"That's a good first step."

She stands up. Wipes her hands on her jeans. Sits down again. Takes a breath and start to talk. "My parents reminded me how to fit in. Not with people, just fit in the world. How heavy is this? Is this transparent in a bright light or is it just me? How close do you have to hold your head to someone's chest before you can hear their heartbeat?"

The Chamberlain Gallery. How casually she passed through a wall. He plans his Wayne persona carefully, but the solidity of the world is something he takes for granted. "You can ask us. Me. Dixie. Alfred."

"No offence, but you and your family aren't exactly normal."

"Neither were your parents."

That stops her for a second. Time enough for a long sad smile. "You'd have liked them. They were like you. People who had made a conscious decision to be exactly who they were."

"You're doing the same thing." Trying to act like a normal student by watching what goes on around her. From the media. No one she can pull aside and ask for guidlines. What does an overexcited young adult away from home for the first time look like from the outside?

"I need someone to help balance me out."

Too much energy, too much undirected stress from not being able to mourn, but basically peaceful. She's never bothered anyone who wasn't a threat to the people around her, to her community.

"That's what friends are for." He's never had enough of those himself. Selina worries about that.

"I'm sorry about the art gallery. Not for helping people. But I could have done it without making you the butt of a joke. Probably could have done it in less time, without all that running around. I was showing off. I actually do want to show people what I can do, I just don't want them to, y'know, overreact. Mom and dad used to say I was a frustrated showoff and I guess that came out when I had an audience."

Mildly embarrassing. Made for a lot of confused speculation from the media. Some bad jokes on comedy shows. "I'm. Not going to complain. Not after you toasted that asshole who said what he did about my mother."

"I don't want to hurt or scare innocent people. But roughing up criminal terrorists a bit doesn't faze me at all."

He's a hypocrite sometimes. Particularly when he tells Dixie to be careful, or to pay attention to the instructions from her security team at school (And yes for fuck's sake, mom and dad had been terrible about their own personal security. He'd overheard Alfred _raging_ about that to a colleague after the funeral). But he's not hypocrite enough to complain about her slapping a foul-mouthed hostage-taker around.

"You've helped a lot of people. But you told me once you need time to yourself, to have a life. How much time are you getting where you're not running around doing something?" Hypocrite.

"I get enough."

"How much?" Alfred would laugh his ass off at this point. The grown man who has to be reminded to eat lecturing someone about taking care of herself.

"I don't get to be weaker than anyone else."

That took a sudden bad turn. "What makes taking time for yourself weak?"

"There are literally billions of people who have lost someone. Every day people who have lost their families, who have been separated from their loved ones, they just get up and go about their lives and try to keep building something. They don't have a thousandth of my strength or my resources, but they just keep getting up." She raises her hands to him. A shrug, or pleading? He can't tell. "So if all those people don't break, I don't get to either. I don't get to be weaker than anyone. It's not right."

How much pain would she have to swallow before it breaks her heart the way her father's broke? "It's not a matter of 'get to' or permission. Everyone has a breaking point. Just because bullets bounce off you doesn't mean you can't be hurt. You're psychologically human. It's just as hard for you to deal with loss as everyone else. Everyone is good and bad at loss in their own way. Fuck. At least you don't dress like a bat."

Her brow creases. "Why is your cape blue?"

"Dark grey-blue blends against more dark surfaces than matte black does."

"Huh. I honestly never noticed that." She slides a hand across her jaw, over her chin. "Mom wasn't close to her parents. She never actually said, but I got the impression she was smarter than the rest of her family. So she never really fit in. When they died she was off balance for a while, but I'm not sure how much it hurt. And they never accepted me as her child, especially her brother, he wasn't even polite about it, so I barely knew them. And when Grandma Jo died I was ten, and dad just kind of powered through it. Worked. I spent a lot of time fixing fences with him. Grandma was a practical woman, so she wouldn't have wanted people to waste time crying."

"How well did powering through it work when his wife died?"

Another long look from her. The corner of her mouth tics a couple of times. "Not good. Maybe I should have paid more attention to that lesson. You're pretty good at this."

"Too much practice. With Dixie." Not with himself.

"How is she?"

"Better than I was at the same point in my life."

"You're doing it right."

Bruce gestures around the room. "You need to burn off some energy. Make some noise. Is there anything you can set up in here that would let you actually work out?"

"Kryptonian forcefield technology. But the mine isn't big enough for the power and heat systems."

"Get a bigger place. Somewhere where you can work out some of this stress. Where you can make noise without worrying about harming anyone."

"Huh." She looks around the room, thoughtfully.

"Do you meditate? Or have any spiritual practices?"

"I'm sort of denominationally all over the place. Mom was raised Episcopalian, dad Methodist. Most of the churches around us were Lutheran or Methodist. I learned Kawatche traditions as well. And I practice Kryptonian meditations, _torquasm vo_ and _torquasm rao_ , mental and physical practices derived from historical martial traditions."

"How many of these traditions tell you to hold it in until your heart breaks?"

"Just the Midwestern ones."

"Find an outlet."

"Aw come on. Don't you want to see what it looks like when a Kryptonian pops a blood vessel? Imagine my blood pressure."

"Sounds like a samurai movie. One swordstroke, five minutes of high-pressure spray."

"It would probably be more like a waterknife. I bet I could cut steel."

"Just don't do it in the middle of a lecture hall. 'Seven dead in mysterious arterial incident; We have never seen so much blood, authorities say'." He watches her shake for a few seconds, in supressed laughter. Waits for the laugh to die down. "Let it out, Jonathan."

"Well." She closes her eyes and smiles. "Folks always did call me daddy's girl."

She stands up and he follows. She's human enough to stretch after sitting. He wonders if it's a habit or if Kryptonian muscles actually do like to move as much as human muscles do. Maybe a bit of both.

"I think helping people openly will make my life a lot easier. I want to help, I like it. If I do it in the open I won't need to worry about cameras all the time, I'll be able to actually coordinate what I'm doing with other rescue workers, I can slow down to reassure people that they'll be okay. And I won't have to worry about trying to be subtle. It's hard to do what I do in a subtle way."

Has she actually been trying to be subtle? Fifteen hundred tons of debris from a storm sorted, stacked, and labeled overnight? Like an environmentally conscious hurricane. "You're not a subtle person."

"I really ain't. I like my privacy, but that's not the same as being subtle. And without my abilities I'm actually kind of terrible at being sneaky. Even with my powers mom always caught me when I was up to something."

Acknowledging her weaknesses in stealth is a good start to dealing with the problem. "How do you plan to avoid being recognized?"

"I'll just wear my House formals. For the rest of it? Take my glasses off, make sure my eyes glow when I'm in the Kryptonian outfit, that trick really changes how my nose and cheeks look, fake a really good Mid-Atlantic accent, and wear my hair back so my stupid jaw looks huge."

It actually sounds like a decent disguise. One that doesn't look like a disguise, and works with people's expectations. "Your jaw is not huge."

"Not compared to yours, no. But God as a kid I got sick fast of people telling me how masculine my jaw looks." She sticks a hand up before he can say anything. "You know what? Let's not go down this back road. It hasn't been graded in a while."

She takes her glasses off and hands them to Bruce. The stars light up behind her pupils as she quickly ties her hair back in a high braid. When she speaks she sounds like a 1940s movie actor. "I'll have to tie it back better than this for work, but how does it look?"

He's seen her with her glasses off, her eyes lit up like that before. But if he hadn't, it would be effective. Her accent no longer sounds like it started to move from the Midwest to the East Coast and got stuck halfway. And when she wears her hair down it does soften the line of her jaw. "Good enough."

She takes her glasses and puts them back on. The light from her eyes turns the lenses to rainbows. "People are talking about me already. You're right, I'm not subtle. The only reason no one wants to say anything openly is because they can't get a real picture of me. Electronics are easy to spot with my vision. And without proof, going on record about what they see just sounds crazy. But they're talking about me, and I want to get ahead of the rumours before what they say gets too... "

"Too what?"

"Too religious. They're already calling me the superwoman. Because they think my House emblem is an _S_."

"What does it mean?"

"As a symbol, it's actually a syllable. _Bao_. Doesn't mean anything on its own. But there's a whole system of numerology and symbolism behind the House emblems. It means Hope." She blinks and the stars go out. "So, I need to ask you something."

"Go ahead."

"Are you attracted to me?"

The question takes him a second to process. That was a hell of a segue. Are they being honest now? Fuck. "Yes."

He should be more comfortable with this. There aren't a lot of people he's truly honest with but he tries to practice it with Selina. Dixie. Alfred. Try now. "I'm not a good judge of... I don't know how to put it. How I feel about other people? How other people feel about me? That... flow of it." He gestures back and forth between himself and Cantrell. He must look fucking ridiculous. "I've never been good at that. It's easier in the cowl, the distance helps. Some of it might be trauma, because sometimes it feels like everything else in my life is. But on my mother's side we're all a bit like that. Are you attracted to me?"

Her throat bobs. "Yes. Why, was I being too subtle with the... " Holding her arms up, she wraps them around an imaginary figure. Moves her hands around.

"Yes." After three months of chasing one another around rooftops, Selina ended the hunt by breaking into his house and draping herself across his bed. Naked. And he'd still asked _what are you doing here?_ because he is a fucking idiot. Fucking Kane family emotional skills.

"Bruce, most people don't need enhanced senses to pick up on that."

"It might help me."

"I think I'm starting to get your sense of humour."

"I wasn't making a joke."

"I'm aware."

One of his stupid wheezy laughs again. "My family is trying to encourage me. And they're not subtle. Alfred has asked if he should start learning to prepare green bean casserole."

Her eyes go wide with surprise. Amused surprised, matched by a sputtering laugh that shakes her shoulders. "Is Selina in on that too?"

"Yes. Actually she wants piece of you."

A very undignified snort. "Get in line." She shakes her head. "When it came to House leadership my ancestors liked a heroic build. On Krypton I would have looked like an ordinary heirarch of the House of El. On Earth... Let's just say I'd have appreciated something a little less, um, obvious. When I first started growing I tried wearing baggy clothes, but that just made more people tell me how pretty I'd look if I dressed right. Complete strangers just passing through town would do it. So I dress to fit in with whatever group I'm going to be part of. It's not easy to blend in when you look like a five ten fitness model."

Better developed than most fitness models. Don't be an ass, Bruce. Move on. "You're five eleven."

"Ten and a bit."

"Why do you wear boots with heels if you're sensitive about your height?"

"I am not sensitive about my height."

Don't be a Kane. Change the subject. "You're modified to be attractive by Kryptonian standards."

"No, this would have been a maternal look back there. Protective. Krypton translates to Guardian Stone, and Mama Bear was seriously ripped. My cousin Kara was more attractive by Kandra standards."

Gleaming crystal sand rises from the floor. It shapes itself into a human shape and then takes colour. A slender girl, blonde. Long delicate neck. Could be anywhere from fourteen to sixteen, probably closer to fourteen. Dressed in a more revealing version of Cantrell's House uniform, perhaps a less formal style. Doesn't really look like Cantrell. Except those eyes, the same blue as Cantrell's. The brow and nose, a bit. The line of the jaw, even if it's not as strong. And the shape of the ears.

The statue ripples and flows to a dark-haired woman in a long yellow tunic and deep orange cape. The woman from the memorial.

"Lara Larvan Lawm El."

"That's good for a first try. Lara Lor-Van. Light of Waxing Moon. The Lady Lara of the House of El." The statue fades back to sand, back to the floor. Like a dream. Nothing here seems really permanent.

"This is a house of the dead." Cantrell brushes her hair back from her face. "Everything fades. I don't really spend too much time here."

Cantrell faces him. "My parents told me the best thing to do with people is be honest. So thank you for agreeing to help me. With being my check-in on reality. Just with being my friend." She puts her hand against his bicep. "So getting everything out in the open, you are uncomfortably hot. And as frustrating and weird as you can be sometimes, I really like being around you. But we're not going to hook up." Letting go of his arm she takes that long strand of hair that curls in front of her face and twists it around her fingers. "I'm just not interested in what you and Selina have. I don't think other people are wrong to be in open or poly relationships, it's just not for me. And I'm not going to ask you to break up with someone to be with me. That would just be so many layers of screwed up. And I really think right now I need a friend more than a boyfriend." Tangling her fingers in the curl. More of that constant energy. Untangling her fingers. "And on top of all that, you're a high-profile billionaire in your mid-twenties with a foster kid. I'll be nineteen next month. I won't be finished school for a few more years. So I really kind of regret saying we're not getting together, but I think I'm completely not ready for a serious relationship yet."

"Jimmy Olsen."

She offers him a half smile. "It's normal to have an SO in university."

Ah. "And you're lonely."

"Yeah." How much of her energy is from dealing with constant stress over the past year? How much is from living inside a body charged to levels that should blow her apart like a bomb? "I like Jimmy, and he's funny, and for someone who worries so much all the time he's really brave, and I just really need someone close right now. I don't think we're going to be long term but you never really know until you get there."

That searchlight grin of hers lights up again. "Plus, and please don't take this personally because you really are a good person, but when I get around to adopting I'm not bringing my kid up rich. I've been around Jimmy long enough to see how it does weird things to your head."

"I can't argue with that. But I don't have a choice with Dixie. You've decided to adopt?"

The grin fades and then dims completely. "Bruce, I'm an alien. It took a couple of months after I found out for that to really sink in with me. Too many other things going on. It wasn't until Mrs White, one of my teachers, got pregnant that I realized, _well fuck_. Mom helped me out dealing with that."

She sighs, and is quiet. He's not sure what to say and he doesn't know any rote phrases for sorry you're infertile. Finally she sighs again. "So. Dixie. Thank you for reaching out to her, Bruce. Too many people are happy to tell me that they'd never do anything like that."

"Who the fuck says something like that to an adopted kid?"

"Just folk."

* * *

  
"Oh hey hikers, good thing it's cloudy or they'd see us." No the fucking clouds are not a good thing. Either of them could win a wet t-shirt contest right now.

Plus it's cold. "I need to stop."

"What?"

She can't hear over the wind. "I SAID I NEED TO - "

She shakes her head. Of course she can hear over the wind. "I heard, I'm just surprised. You've never said anything before when we're flying. It's fine, we're close to a town."

They swoop through fog, trailing condensation. Cantrell's eyes flare like headlights in the mist. "Okay, I've got the security cameras mapped out. I'm going in."

At five hundred miles an hour.

Fuck his entire life.

* * *

They land on a sidewalk behind a gas station, out of range of the security cameras. He's cold and soaked and desperately needs to piss. She's chatting about bioorganometallic confinement rings and local violation of conservation of angular momentum in quark-gluon plasmas. This must be how Dixie feels when he talks about variables. In the foggy afternoon they walk around to the front of the station, fog glowing in strange hues from the neon sign of the station itself and the hotel across the parking lot. The only people in front of the station are three young teenaged boys, leaning on various things and staring into their phones. Guided by hormones their heads rise as Cantrell turns the corner. Cantrell notes their attention and her eyes get a bit narrow.

She turns to him to say something. Then her brow crinkles and she reaches out to his forehead.

"What are you doing?"

"Hold still. You've got a bug plastered in your hair."

"Next time, I'm wearing a helmet."

* * *

"Do I even need to ask if you failed to get any action?"

"We had a good talk. Seriously."

Selina pulls herself upright on the couch and swings her feet to the floor. Almost to the floor. The couch was built for someone closer to his height. "Ah?"

"We're friends."

"Good. You should spend more time with your other friends too."

"I don't have - Fuck. Point taken."


	6. Day Five

Sunday, 23rd May

"Cantrell, this is not the best way to handle the situation."

"Go away," a muffled voice says through the door to her dorm room. "Let me starve in peace."

" _Cantrell_." Sally Selwyn pinches the bridge of her nose. "You've only been in there one night. You are not going to starve."

"I skipped dinner," Cantrell mutters. Sally can barely hear her.

"Yeah, and you're skipping a study group too. You can't afford that." Appeal to her workaholic side. That usually does the trick.

Faint noises like an annoyed bear come through the plywood.

"Were those words?"

Louder annoyed bear noises.

"Okay, not words. Use your words, Cantrell."

What Sally needs right now is someone to help her pry Cantrell out of her room. Lori would be perfect, but this building is the next best thing to completely inaccessible and Cantrell isn't answering calls or messages. So what Sally gets is Cantrell's musclehead friend from Smallville, Brad Bashford.

Brad lumbers up the stairs to the top floor of Wylie House, shoulders coming into view almost before his head. For whatever reason he swats at a couple of overhead beams as he walks to Cantrell's door. Maybe it's just to remind himself where the steel beams are. It's not like they're that much above his head. Brad looms over Sally and chews on his lip. "Oh man, I guess she heard already."

"Heard about _what?_ " Privately, Sally thinks of Brad as Cantrell's pet hot blonde idiot. Sally likes big dumb guys as well as the next girl - Maybe a little more. Okay, a lot more - but she's at least 80% sure Brad is gay. He's just too muscle-obsessed to be straight. Dimmer than a box full of broken light bulbs too. But he has known Cantrell since they were kids. Maybe he can help get her out of there.

Brad crosses his arms and shakes his beautiful empty head. "Shit, she must be really pissed off. She only does stuff like this when she's ready to kill someone." He thinks for a second. "I got it. Go stick your finger in a light socket or something."

" _What?!"_

"Trust me. Cantrell is the world's biggest, nosiest, nosy big sister. Go do something dangerous."

Yep. Idiot. "This is serious, Brad. She won't even tell me what's wrong."

"Just build a murderbot. That'll get her attention."

How has Cantrell not killed this meathead? "I'm not - _Hey_."

Ignoring her, Brad walks over to the reading cubicles in the middle of the floor and grabs one of the old upholstered chairs. He lifts it up over his head as though he's getting ready to throw it at the wall.

Cantrell's voice comes from right behind Sally. "What're you doing?" Sally jumps and turns to face Cantrell. She hadn't even heard the door open.

"See?" Still holding the chair over his head, Brad grins and nods. "It's like she can smell stupidity."

Brad puts the chair down and walks over to Cantrell. "Listen, I don't think any of your friends are really going to care."

Death is too good for Brad Bashford. His abs aren't worth letting him live. "What the _hell_ Brad?! Of course we care! Why do you think I'm here?!"

"You're trying to help Cantrell."

"Yes!" Sally turns to Cantrell, who is still in her pajamas. And frankly looks too pale and a little too wide-eyed for comfort. Something must be seriously wrong. "Cantrell, why are you locked in your room? Why is Brad here?"

"I'm making sure Cantrell's okay. She's my friend."

Glaring at these two isn't working. Sally tries harder. "Would one of you _please_ tell me what's wrong?"

"Oh shit. I guess you haven't seen it yet?" She is going to take picture of Brad's expression, she is going to print it and frame it and display it in a gallery, and she is going to label it 'The Light Dawns On Mount Halfwit'.

" _Ob_ viously."

Brad unlocks his phone and holds it out. Sally grabs his arm - Those biceps are like whole hams - and pulls the screen down to a readable level. Her eyebrows shoot all the way up.

"Oh _wow_ ," says the rancher's daughter from Montana. "Ride him cowgirl."

* * *

**GOTHAM GAZETTE**

**New Romance For Bruce Wayne?**  
**Couple Spotted Outside Lake Carmel Hotel**

_(A blurry phone picture of Cantrell Kent, hair in disarray, gazing at Bruce Wayne's face as she leans towards him, hand reaching up to his brow. Both of them are dressed in extremely wet thin cotton.)_

Mystery woman previously seen with Wayne at Metropolis charity event  
Identified as former ex of nuclear terrorist Lex Luthor

* * *

"That doesn't make sense," Selina taps her screen and frowns. "She can't be a mystery woman and then be identified in the next sentence. Or is it the same sentence? That line is really unclear. And what does 'former ex' mean? Did they get back together?"

"It's the fucking Gazette. I don't think we were even in Lake Carmel."

Dixie fidgets in her chair. "So, um?"

Selina watches Bruce on his phone. "Who are you texting?"

"Cantrell. Then lawyers."

"Want to borrow mine?"

Dixie has passed beyond fidgeting and moved on to bouncing up and down in the seat. "Um, so?"

"Yes please."

Dixie is practically vibrating in her chair. "So? You know? Um?"

"I'll explain after school."

"It's already after school. Today is Sunday."

"Patience, Grasshopper."

" _Bruuuuuuce!_ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sally Selwyn was introduced as a one-off romance for Clark in a story with a lot of good old-fashioned condescending attitudes about people in wheelchairs. But her introduction to the amnesiac Clark Kent will forever be one of my favourite scenes.
> 
> *Sweaty wild-eyed stranger in ragged clothes stumbles into barn where Sally is working*  
> *Sally looks stranger up and down, holds ladle to her breasts*
> 
> "Here, have some milk."


End file.
